Wednesday, June 04, 2008

STOC PC -- Software Suggestions?

Well, things are moving forward on the STOC 2009 PC front. I think the committee is just about finalized; more about that in a future post.

The next big question is what software to use for paper submission and reviewing. The last several conferences I've been involved with used easychair, which I view as OK from the PC committee member side of things. Adequate, but not great.

Of course, now I'm viewing things as a PC chair, which feels somewhat different. The first priority is that it makes automated tasks easy, to save me (and the committee) time. The second (although related) priority is that there is some mechanism to easily get the data out -- preferably in some sort of tab-delimited text type way -- so that I can process it as necessary. I'd like this both so I can process information as I see fit, and so I can deal effectively with any emergencies that arise by managing the data myself. The third priority is a reasonable amount of flexibility. Finally, I'd like it easy enough that a minimally trained monkey can use it. I don't know how easychair performs in these respects.

Obviously, I'm asking too much. But I'm eager to take suggestions, both from people who have run conferences and from reviewers who just have software preferences.

6 comments:

Please take a look at Shai Halevi's software that has become quite popular for cryptography conferences. I have also used it myself as a program chair (plus many times as PC member) with no complaints.

I would like an opinion from you about being part of the program committee of a not well known conference. I just graduated and was never part of any committee nor could collaborate with many people. Recently I got the opportunity to be part of a conference committee. Will being part of the committee of a "not so good" conference be bad for my CV? All in all, it is not the Las Vegas mega conference.

I second Jonathan's suggestion of using Shai Halevi's software ("Web Submission and Review Software").

I have used it for Eucrocrypt 2007 and it worked very well. It has some features no other PC software I know has (ranking of reviewers by the PC Chair and finds a stable matching to recommend an assignment).

Anonymous 4 -- I don't know your exact situation, but generally, you've got to start somewhere. I don't think being part of the PC of a not-so-good conference means much of anything on your CV; the question is, it is a reasonable use of your time. That depends on what you'll get out of it -- including who you'll meet doing it.